


Nocturnal Birds, Bitter Work

by BabelTongue



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, M/M, Multi, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:20:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21994390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabelTongue/pseuds/BabelTongue
Summary: The ending of the canon Star Wars saga could have been better. Let's give Rey, Kylo Ren, Poe Dameron, Finn, and Rose Tico the journey they deserve.This fic takes place after the events of The Last Jedi and will follow the same themes of The Rise of Skywalker but with some (hopeful) improvements, including:Rey turning fully to the darkside. (Before being redeemed.)Kylo Ren/Ben Solo turning fully to the lightside.Kylo Ren/Ben Solo not dying.Leia Organa not dying.Rey remaining a Palpatine, but in a way that actually makes sense.Emperor Palpatine remaining dead, so that Vader's sacrifice and entire arc isn't wasted.Poe being queer.Finn actually doing something.Rose actually doing something.A longer, more well paced arc for all of the characters and the story.
Relationships: Finn/Rose Tico, Kylo Ren/Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn/Rose Tico, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42





	1. Chapter 1

Turning and turning, the widening gyre opened within the Jedi’s dreams like a dark flower- though it wasn’t pitch. It was void. Free of light. Free of color. Free of form. Its petals curled out, like yawning, hungry tendrils, snuffing out each star, consuming every nebula, swallowing infinite planets without a whimper of protest. In the heart of the crawling blanket of oblivion, if it had a heart at all, there were great storms of something beyond comprehension. Not time, or space, or matter, or energy. Something rawer. A primordial thought. Emotion. Putrid, rotting love. Decay and rebirth. Madness-inducing terror and anger so vivid it could annihilate galaxies with a breath. Safety, peace, and tragedy. 

The dream shifted. The great growing beast was replaced by a colorful, living world. Rey had returned to her body and she was reaching forward as she knelt on the ground. Below her was a carpet of alien greenery. Blooming flowers and soft grasses framed her body as she was pushed down and forward, a passenger within her own head, unable to do anything as her arms, red and dripping with blood, clawed towards their goal. Ahead of her, Rey saw what she was after. Whatever it was was black and primal, contrasting against the living world. As Rey picked it up, cradling it in her palms, the thing jumped- an animated organ pumping within a phantom body, contracting and expanding. It was a heart, still beating, but the rest of the carnage was nowhere to be found. 

Rey knew whose heart it was, though. She lifted it to her mouth and ate of it. The meat was bitter. Bitter. But she had no choice but to swallow. 

Again, the dream shifted. Rey was a child back on Jakku, standing under the relentless midday sky. The sun burned her skin and the sand cut into her like hundreds of blades as her hair whipped around her neck and face. She held her small, trembling hand against the sun to block out the light as she endlessly searched the horizon. Her lips were cracked and her throat had nearly closed with dehydration. Something bitter lingered on the back of her tongue. She had never been more thirsty. She had never been more alone. 

A dark spot appeared above Jakku’s sand dunes, flitting in and out of existence as waves of heat rolled off the surface of the planet. It might have been mistaken for an incoming ship, but it never approached the spot where Rey stood, nor did it gain any comprehensible form. There were no wings, or engines, or hard angles. The void simply expanded, growing wider, filling up a fraction of the sky, then an eighth, then a quarter. It greedily drank the light, swallowing the planet without a sound as a thousand panicked souls cried out in horror. Those souls could not see what Rey saw, though- they could not see that the widening maw was not their destruction. It was fulfillment, a redemption in love and fury. The building blocks of reality. The raw Force returning the universe to its natural, entropic form. 

And it was beautiful. 

Rey woke up from her dream sweating. Her eyes shot open, only to be met by the darkness of Ajan Kloss’s canopy. Noisy and nocturnal birds called from distant treetops, reminding the young Jedi that the dark chasm of her dream was just that. The pallet beneath her was hard and her body was sore, bruised from the weeks of training under Master Organa. The humid air seemed to cling to her, suffocating her even beneath her thin sheets. A hundred yards away two insomniacs, probably engineers, whispered in a language Rey could not understand, and the leaves above her obscured a view of the distant stars, smothering the entire camp in darkness. 

Fully returning to the waking world, Rey tried to clear her head, tried to chase away the dream. Her hands hurt and as she uncurled her tight fists, she understood why. As she slept she had dug her nails into the skin of her palms, opening now-bloody wounds. She could not see the eight crescent-shaped cuts in the darkness of Ajan Kloss’s night, but she could feel the warm and copper liquid pooling beneath her knuckles. Rey knew she should have gotten up to retrieve a medpack so she could disinfect and wrap her hands, but her chest still thrummed and the vision of the great Sith void hovered in her mind like a deadly heat sickness. She breathed deeply and waveringly. 

Some movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. A shadow, still obscured by the cloak of night, turned its head towards her. Rey didn’t need her vision to sense his presence, though. Her nightmares, beautiful as they were, could not have been a product of her own imagination or the light of the Force. It was him- that murderer and coward, digging around in her head, warping the Force into endless, engulfing seas that seemed to drown her every time she closed her eyes. Every night. Every second. Without fail. As he always did.

Rey hated him for it- she had never hated anyone as much as she hated him. 

“You did this.” Rey’s words joltingly cut into the darkness. She was secluded and just far enough away from the camp as to not awaken any light sleepers with her accusations. But the shadow could hear her, just as she could hear every breath he took, every minute movement he made. He was the one who had planted the dream. He was the one who tormented her.

He was silent for several seconds. Rey’s palms continued to bleed against her damp pallet. 

“What is it you think I did, Rey?” Kylo Ren’s voice fell like a knife, deep and unnatural in the Resistance's planetary safehouse. The young Jedi curled her lips in disgust. She said nothing. Their bond was curse more deadly than any hallucination, any nightmare. It was disease. 

“The vision?” Kylo Ren prompted, unmoving, after the silence had passed between them. “The dream? It was strong, wasn’t it? It woke me-”

He paused then and seemed to lean forward a few inches, his features still covered in shadows, his form near-indistinguishable from the creeping night. “It woke you too.”

“It’s night there, isn’t it, Rey? Where are you hiding? A planet. A moon. Not a ship- we would have found you by now if you were using hyperspace links. You’re in the Unknown Regions or the Outer Rim, but your commander isn’t brave enough to send her fleet into uncharted space.”

“Our commander- your mother-” Rey spat, her hands itching beneath her sheets, searching futilely for Luke’s lightsaber. The weapon was with Master Organa still, but in a moment of blinding fury it was easy for Rey to forget the agreement she had made with Leia. 

“My mother is an idiot who wouldn’t dare send the last hope of the Jedi into the Unknown Regions. I know her. You're in the Outer Rim.” Kylo Ren stood from his seated position, stepping closer to Rey. She hoisted herself up in response, practically jumping to her feet. Without a lightsaber, she scrambled for the closest weapon. A harnessed blaster had been tossed beside her makeshift bed earlier in the evening and she grabbed it, pointing the weapon directly where Kylo Ren’s head must have been. 

He halted his approach.

“If you come to me before I find you, and I will find you, I will spare your friends. I will grant you that mercy. I will tell you about the visions. I will tell you about your family. Everything you’ve wanted to know for so long is here. Right here.” Kylo Ren extended his hand as he spoke, offering it to Rey, who still held the blaster against the looming shadow. 

“All you have to do is give in.”

Rey fired the blaster, impulse and rage running through her like a drug. She wanted to strike Kylo down, end the First Order then and there in the jungles of Ajan Kloss. She wanted to watch him crumple to the ground, undone, unable to poison her mind with beautiful visions and long-forgotten memories. She wanted him to suffer. She wanted to avenge the memory of Ben Solo and all the grief he brought. 

But the fire from the blaster hit the canopy of leaves across from the small opening of Rey’s camp, singeing the leaves and startling the birds. Kylo Ren was gone, back on his ship or whatever planet had the misfortune of hosting the First Order’s Supreme Leader. And Rey was alone. Sweating. Bleeding. Shaking. With a blaster hanging from her fingers.

The camp behind her immediately buzzed to life, startled by the sound of a weapon being fired so close to the Resistance base. Bodies began to emerge from their ships and tents. Blasters were drawn. Orders were being shouted. Somewhere in the commotion Leia Organa called Rey’s name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was inspired by, and used excerpts from, the poems "The Second Coming" by W.B Yeats and "In the Desert" by Stephen Crane. 
> 
> Also, a note on SW canon: I'm not super invested in the Star Wars extended universe, so I will inevitably get some things wrong. If you spot anything egregious, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me a message. I won't promise that I will edit or build on concepts from the EU if it doesn't fit what I'm going for, but I will take suggestions deeply to heart.


	2. Chapter 2

It was almost effortless now- shaping the flow of the Force. Through her body, through all dimensions of reality, Rey could sense it. Expanding and contracting. In and out. Infinitely and finitely. Like a deep breath, the energy of the universe seemed to stream around her, barely constrained, but barely observable at the same time. It burst through time and space, responding to fate like a branch bending under a heavy weight. The Force molded itself into profound and unknowable shapes, enveloping Rey’s whole body, her whole mind, lifting. Pushing. Smothering. 

She was one with the Force. And the Force was one with her. Rey could not tear herself away from it now any more than she could pull out her own spine. Or her own heart. Though as indivisible as the young Jedi was from her power, something was still unsettling, still prickling the hairs at the back of her neck, keeping her from finding peace in the Force.

She hadn’t thought much of it, the prickling, while she trained with Master Skywalker on Ahch-To. There had been other things to worry about then: She had wrestled with herself, with her parents, with a legacy of being sold off to scavenge in Jakku’s inhospitable deserts. In the boundless depths of Ahch-To she had been told that she radiated towards the dark side of the Force, and that only her will could stop it’s diseased spread. She had even taken on Kylo Ren while she trained under her late master, begging him to return, offering him a way home. But still, as she labored and sparred, as she drowned herself tackling every new foe, within and without, something was missing- achingly so.

Where were the others? 

The other Jedi. The ones that came before. 

Why couldn’t Rey hear them? Why weren't they with her? All the times she needed them- their guidance, their love. Silence. 

What was she missing?

Twenty feet from Ajan Kloss’s dense forest floor, the young Jedi suspended herself among the draping vines and nesting birds. The act was now as easy as breathing for Rey- she shaped the Force to lift her into the air as weightlessly as if she were floating through the vacuum of space. Gravity bent to her command. Matter bent to her command too. Her own mind, however, was a different beast entirely. 

It had been a few days since her vision of the growing void and Kylo Ren’s short, fevered visit. Rey’s furious shot into the dark had woken the entire Resistance camp. When Master Organa had questioned her about it later, she had explained it away as a violent nightmare that had gotten the better of her, though she sensed the General knew better. Either way, Leia had let the topic go. 

Her training over the following days had been difficult. The days on Ajan Kloss were hot and humid. The hours were wild as the “planet” that served as the Resistance base was actually a moon, the dual nature of its orbit sometimes causing the sky to shift rapidly in only a matter of minutes. The afternoon could go from stifling to suddenly dark, with an alien pattern of stars appearing just beyond the firmament. In the unpredictable hours of sunlight, Rey had run through the dense jungle, pushing herself beyond old limits. She scaled trees that touched the sky. She moved stones that could have crushed her with a flick of her wrist. She leapt over deep canyons carved by ancient rivers. Isolated in the forest, she had taken fallen branches and beaten them against the ground, screaming her frustrations into the wild world that surrounded her, free from the yolk of the Resistance. And the threat of the First Order. And Kylo Ren. Still, as much as Rey screamed and climbed and ran, the prickling remained. The more she focused on it, the more it felt as if she were being stabbed instead. 

“Be with me. Be with me. Be with me.” 

White stones and other debris from the forest orbited around Rey. Her legs were crossed and her robes hung in the air like ornaments, lifting with the breeze as she meditated. 

“Be with me.” 

BB-8 whirred softly somewhere below her. 

“They aren’t with me.” Rey’s concentration broke with a frustrated sigh. 

She slowly descended from her mid-air perch. Flipping head over heels in the air, she effortlessly stepped back onto the ground, shaking her head. BB-8 rolled towards Rey as she landed, chirping in an almost comforting tone. It only helped a little bit. 

The sun was going to set soon, and Rey was no closer to knowing or communing with any of the Jedi that came before her. Master Organa would gently ask about her progress later that evening, and for what seemed like weeks on end, Rey would have no answer besides ‘I jumped higher’ or ‘I moved quicker.’ Nothing meaningful. Nothing tangible. Just pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. 

“Come on BB-8. Let’s just run the course again.” For Rey that’s all there was to do until the Resistance received more information from their web of spies or the First Order obliterated the entire star system in an attempt to wipe them out. Eventually one would have to happen. 

* * *

General Organa held a meeting late in the evening. Dozens of rebels gathered around her, some leaning against trees and ships, others sitting on the ground, looking up at their princess. The mood was somber. The heat of the day lingered. Resistance fighters were lethargic after weeks without any word from their allies or spies. Even Leia, as composed as she was, could hardly rouse them from their apathy. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, you all know I would never lie to you.” The General began. “Our situation doesn’t look good. Our allies have been slow to contact us, even slower to join us here. Some of them, though we aren’t sure how many just yet, have inevitably been discovered and picked up by the First Order. But, as long as we live, as long as hope lives, the Resistance will not stop fighting. We will not give up on our friends. And we will not let fear and tyranny drive peace and democracy into oblivion. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, General.” The voices surrounding Leia echoed through the forest and to the far posts of the Rebellion camp, though something about the collective tone was unconvincing. 

“Right.” Leia finally nodded, her hands clasping in front of her. Behind her stood Poe Dameron, his arms crossed and face contorted into hard lines of anxiety. Finn and Rose Tico stood to his left, the former casually leaning against Poe’s ship, while the latter seemed to pace within a meter-by-meter box, her eyes sweeping the General and her fellow freedom fighters as she fidgeted. At Poe’s feet sat Rey, her disheveled state evidence of her long, exhaustive day and her chronic frustration. Around them there were dozens of other rebels all in one state of defeat or another. 

Leia was almost pensive as she began to speak again. “If we ever hope to keep our allies alive, however, there is something we must do. An oversight, a mistake, rather, was made during our escape from Crait.” 

Many of the rebels looked up, recalling their last clash with the First Order. The planet Crait had been inhospitable, with sterile sheets of salt covering the vast flats and jagged mountains. On Crait the Resistance had attempted to fight off the First Order’s overpowering ships and walkers before they were finally forced to retreat. In the end only the will of the Force had saved them, but their numbers and morale had been crippled. No one wanted to return. 

“We thought we had recovered most of our critical intelligence during our retreat from Crait. Whatever we could not recover, we could only assume was destroyed in the battle. All of our intact ships and vital lines of communication made it safely off the planet, and we were certain that there was nothing left for the First Order to scavenge. You were all there. You saw the damage- who would have thought it would be possible to find anything salvageable in that mess?” Leia shook her head. Some of the rebels bristled, coming fully to attention now. 

“A day ago we received a signal from our base in Crait. One of our droids, one we thought for sure had been destroyed during our retreat, somehow survived.” As Leia spoke, Lieutenant Connix, at her right hand, pulled up a hologram of Crait. Their former base was highlighted and pulsed faintly on the spinning globe.

“The signal was only a whisper, hardly detectable, but it was enough for us to realize the severity of the situation. Friends, if the First Order gets their hands on this droid, if they dig through the wreckage and tap into this droid’s memory, we won’t have a single ally left in the known universe. Is that clear?”

It was not clear. Poe was the first to speak. 

“Wait. Wait. I don’t understand. What are you saying? What’s on that droid’s memory that could wipe out all of our allies if it falls into the wrong hands?”

“Not just our allies.” Leia said somberly. “The whole of the Resistance.” There was silence, but it did not remain for long.

Poe’s hands went to his hair, his fingers turning to knots. Around them rebels were clambering to their feet, their exhaustion replaced by deep concern. 

“General?” Finn asked above the growing commotion, pushing himself from Poe’s ship. “What is it? What’s on the droid’s memory?” 

“As you know, we try not to save any information about the identity and location of our spies or safehouses. For obvious reasons. That sort of intelligence is risky to even talk about, let alone keep on hand.” The Princess explained. “But to have a cohesive network, and to make sure no vital information is lost in case of our deaths, sometimes it is necessary to take risks. The droid on Crait is one of those risks. Deep in it’s memory bank, behind a hundred precautions and hidden keys, is the whole of the Resistance. Names. Locations. Everything. It was supposed to be our last failsafe-” 

“And we left it behind?” Poe was close to shouting, his voice high and desperate.

Ignoring the pilot's tantrum as she would a child’s, Leia continued. The attention of all the rebels was thoroughly and irrevocably heightened, all of it trained on her. “I need volunteers. No more than three or four, to return to Crait and bring the droid back. If that’s not possible, we need it destroyed. Nothing can remain. Not a trace of this information can make it back to the First Order. Thousands upon thousands of lives depend on this. A peaceful galaxy depends on this. Generations of free worlds depend on this. Who here is willing to fight for it?”

The now-rowdy crowd, as exacerbated as they were minutes previously, all seemed to speak up at once. Any of them would willingly lie down and die for their general, and finally going out, pumping new life into the Resistance was a task any of the men and women at the base would happily perform. Even if it meant death or capture at the hands of the First Order, it did not matter. They were willing to do what it took to win the day, even on a mission that only served to clean of reckless mistakes. 

Finn’s voice seems to stand out among the rest, though. Despite the way the fighters around Leia seemed to light up, the former Stormtrooper shined brighter. “We’ll go.” He volunteered, his hand patting Poe’s shoulder as he spoke. Of course the two of them would go together. So would Rey. And Rose. They were simply the best for the job. There was no question about it.

Leia turned to him as he spoke, her head nodding slightly. The Princess had tightened her lips, concern painted plainly across her face. It had always been her hope that no one would have to run a mission like this, especially when the risk of being caught by the Order was so high. Of course it was heartening that all of her fighters were so willing to take to the skies to recover the droid, but the risks were sobering and the odds were not in their favor. 

“Thank you, Finn.” She said. Poe looked less enthused, though Leia knew stress had a way of growing in him like a venomous viper. The pilot would be fine, all bad jokes and quick wit in a few hours, but for now the frustration remained palpable. 

“What kind of droid is it?” Poe asked, never once moving away from Finn’s grasp on his shoulder. Naturally, he would follow Finn. Just as he would follow Leia. And if that meant returning to Crait, fine. Fine. He would go. 

“It’s a 2JTJ unit.” Leia told the pair while Rose and Rey listened closely. 

“A personal navigation droid?” Poe asked, his eyes bugging out of his head. “That’s what’s holding the secrets of the Resistance? Why, in the name of the Force, would we store everything in a navigation droid’s memory?” 

“Isn’t it obvious?” Rose finally spoke up as the other pilots and fighters gathered closer. The young rebel was aglow in understanding. “It’s camouflage. Who would expect a service droid to hold the heart of the Resistance?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendship with Finn/Rose cancelled. Now Finn/Rose/Poe is my new best friend. (I'll be changing the tags accordingly.)  
> Poe Dameron has anxiety. Rey has a death drive.   
> More frequent chapters coming. Thank you for the feedback and comments- it keeps the creative juices flowing!


End file.
